Alarie (left) and Alex (right)

SUMMER RESEARCH 2021

This summer I've teamed up with a colleague up at the Natural Resources Research Institute in Duluth MN to conduct some non fish-related work (gasp!).  Michael Joyce, PhD and I attended the same grad program and always talked about conducting some work together. This summer he needed access to a few thousand acres for his grad student Taylor, and we hatched a plan to conduct some research of our own in the SJU arboretum.

Alarie uses a laser tool to measure drey height (right) Tree ID (left)

After interviewing many students, we selected Alexandria Armbrister and Alarie Chu for summer research students. The Bennies are investigating the thermal properties of grey squirrel (Sciurus carolinensis) nests (dreys). Their work includes collection of temperature fluctuation data within the dreys via temperature loggers, drey-site selection data, assessment of the physical area surrounding dreys, and finally drey material analysis.

The main knowledge gaps for modeling squirrel rest site temperature and energetics are, 1) quantifying variation in drey size and biomass of nesting materials, and 2) gathering empirical data to develop/test a model.

Michael Joyce and myself in the field

Ultimately, this information will be integrated with an energetics model for the grey squirrel to evaluate interactions between resting behavior, ambient temperature, and daily energy expenditure.

 

Due to COVID, it was necessary for summer research for 2020 to be conducted virtually. In a deviation from the typical fish-oriented physiology and behavior work, Tyler Ehrke  (summer research student), collaborators at CSB/SJU and I, decided to make the most of the situation and study the effect of the pandemic on student health.
The start of 2020 was highlighted with the outbreak of a new coronavirus (SARS-CoV-2) and the associated disease (COVID-19) which quickly escalated to a global pandemic. Quarantines were established early on and many universities were forced to move to distanced learning, an online learning format. The associated fear of an uncertain future and new learning format lead to anxiety amongst college-aged students. Anxiety can broadly be classified in two ways: trait anxiety and state anxiety. Trait anxiety is a stable susceptibility or a proneness to experience anxiety frequently, or a predisposed nature to anxiety.

State anxiety is defined as a transitory emotional state that varies in intensity and fluctuates over time. In other words, trait anxiety is more associated with a person’s nature, while state anxiety is more situational. For our study, we exclusively looked at state anxiety associated with the new coronavirus and pandemic. State anxiety can be broken down into two sub-categories: cognitive state anxiety and somatic state anxiety, where cognitive anxiety is how anxiety affects a person’s mind/thoughts. Somatic anxiety is then how the body responds to anxiety; responses that cannot be controlled consciously such as increased heart rate, perspiration, and altered digestive function.

To cope with anxiety, many students choose to engage in physical activity. The aim of our study therefore was to determine if student anxiety specifically related to COVID-19  could be mitigated by regular physical activity (PA). Via a large online student survey, we assessed both forms of state anxiety as well as PA within the College of St. Benedict and St John’s University (CSB/SJU) student bodies. We hypothesized that higher levels of PA will be associated with lower state anxiety in these college students.

An optional online survey was sent to both CSB/SJU student bodies. The survey was based on the State-Trait Inventory for Cognitive and Somatic Anxiety (STICSA) measurement system formulated from the Spielberger Trait-State Anxiety Inventory. Within the survey, participants were asked questions pertaining to both divisions of state anxiety- cognitive anxiety and somatic anxiety. Participants were asked twenty-one questions pertaining to how they currently felt when taking the questionnaire versus before the pandemic.

Tyler Ehrke

As hypothesized, we found that overall, both moderate and vigorous PA were all associated with significantly reduced state anxiety for both cognitive and somatic forms. See poster for specific results or email Tehrke001@csbsju.edu